Seljuq leaders

Rulers of the Seljuq Dynasty (1037–1157)

The "Great Seljuqs" were heads of the family; in theory their
authority extended over all the other Seljuq lines, although in
practice this often was not the case. Turkish custom called for the
senior member of the family to be the Great Seljuq, although
usually the position was associated with the ruler of western
Persia.

Notes

Grousset, Rene, The Empire of the Steppes, (New
Brunswick:Rutgers University Press, 1988), 147.

Grousset, Rene, The Empire of the Steppes, (Rutgers
University Press, 1991), 161,164; "..renewed the Seljuk attempt
to found a great Turko-Persian empire in eastern Iran..",
"It is to be noted that the Seljuks, those Turkomans who became
sultans of Persia, did not Turkify Persia-no doubt because they did
not wish to do so. On the contrary, it was they who voluntarily
became Persians and who, in the manner of the great old Sassanid
kings, strove to protect the Iranian populations from the
plundering of Ghuzz bands and save Iranian culture from the
Turkoman menace."

John Perry, THE HISTORICAL ROLE OF TURKISH IN RELATION TO
PERSIAN OF IRAN in Iran & the Caucasus, Vol. 5, (2001), pp.
193-200. excerpt: " First, since the Turkish-speaking rulers of
most Iranian polities from the Ghaznavids and Seljuks onward were
already iranized and patronized Persian literature in their
domains, the expansion of Turk-ruled empires served to expand the
territorial domain of written Persian into the conquered areas,
notably Anatolia and Central and South Asia."

Ram Rahul. "March of Central Asia", Indus Publishing, pg
124:"The Seljuk conquest of Persia marked the triumph of the Sunni
over Shii but without a decline in Persian culture. The Seljuks
eventually adopted the Persian culture.

Ehsan Yarshater, “Iran” in Encyclopedia Iranica:"The ascent of
the Saljuqids also put an end to a period which Minorsky has called
“the Persian intermezzo”(see Minorsky, 1932, p. 21), when Iranian
dynasties, consisting mainly of the Saffarids, the Samanids, the
Ziyarids, the Buyids, the Kakuyids, and the Bavandids of Tabarestan
and Gilan, ruled most of Iran. By all accounts, weary of the
miseries and devastations of never-ending conflicts and wars,
Persians seemed to have sighed with relief and to have welcomed the
stability of the Saljuqid rule, all the more so since the Saljuqids
mitigated the effect of their foreignness, quickly adopting the
Persian culture and court customs and procedures and leaving the
civil administration in the hand of Persian personnel, headed by
such capable and learned viziers as ‘Amid-al-Molk Kondori and
Nezam-al-Molk."

C.E. Bosworth, "Turkish expansion
towards the west", in UNESCO HISTORY OF HUMANITY, Volume IV: From the
Seventh to the Sixteenth Century, UNESCO Publishing /
Routledge,2000. p. 391: "While the Arabic language retained its
primacy in such spheres as law, theology and science, the culture
of the Seljuk court and secular literature within the sultanate
became largely Persianized; this is seen in the early adoption of
Persian epic names by the Seljuk rulers (Qubād, Kay Khusraw and so
on) and in the use of Persian as a literary language (Turkish must
have been essentially a vehicle for everyday speech at this time).
The process of Persianization accelerated in the thirteenth century
with the presence in Konya of two of the most distinguished
refugees fleeing before the Mongols, Bahā' al-Dīn Walad and his son
Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, whose Mathnawī, composed in
Konya, constitutes one of the crowning glories of classical Persian
literature."

Stephen P. Blake, "Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal
India, 1639-1739". Cambridge University Press, 1991. pg 123: "For
the Seljuks and Il-Khanids in Iran it was the rulers rather than
the conquered who were "Persianized and Islamicized".

Mehmed Fuad Koprulu, "Early Mystics in Turkish Literature",
Translated by Gary Leiser and Robert Dankoff, Routledge, 2006, pg
149: "If we wish to sketch, in broad outline, the civilization
created by the Seljuks of Anatolia, we must recognize that the
local, i.e. non-Muslim, element was fairly insignificant compared
to the Turkish and Arab-Persian elements, and that the Persian
element was paramount/The Seljuk rulers, to be sure, who were in
contact with not only Muslim Persian civilization, but also with
the Arab civilizations in al-jazīra and Syria – indeed, with all
Muslim peoples as far as India – also had connections with
{various} Byzantine courts. Some of these rulers, like the great
'Ala' al-Dīn Kai-Qubād I himself, who married Byzantine princesses
and thus strengthened relations with their neighbors to the west,
lived for many years in Byzantium and became very familiar with the
customs and ceremonial at the Byzantine court. Still, this close
contact with the ancient Greco-Roman and Christian traditions only
resulted in their adoption of a policy of tolerance toward art,
aesthetic life, painting, music, independent thought – in short,
toward those things that were frowned upon by the narrow and
piously ascetic views {of their subjects}. The contact of the
common people with the Greeks and Armenians had basically the same
result. {Before coming to Anatolia}, the Turks had been in contact
with many nations and had long shown their ability to synthesize
the artistic elements that they had adopted from these nations.
When they settled in Anatolia, they encountered peoples with whom
they had not yet been in contact and immediately established
relations with them as well. 'Ala' al-Dīn Kai-Qubād I established
ties with the Genoese and, especially, the Venetians at the ports
of Sinop and Antalya, which belonged to him, and granted them
commercial and legal concessions. Meanwhile, the Mongol invasion,
which caused a great number of scholars and artisans to flee from
Turkistan, Iran, and Khwārazm and settle within the Empire of the
Seljuks of Anatolia, resulted in a reinforcing of Persian influence
on the Anatolian Turks. Indeed, despite all claims to the contrary,
there is no question that Persian influence was paramount among the
Seljuks of Anatolia. This is clearly revealed by the fact that the
sultans who ascended the throne after Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kai-Khusraw I
assumed titles taken from ancient Persian mythology, like
Kai-Khusraw, Kai-Kā'ūs, and Kai-Qubād; and that 'Ala' al-Dīn
Kai-Qubād I had some passages from the Shāhnāme inscribed
on the walls of Konya and Sivas. When we take into consideration
domestic life in the Konya courts and the sincerity of the favor
and attachment of the rulers to Persian poets and Persian
literature, then this fact {i.e. the importance of Persian
influence} is undeniable. With regard to the private lives of the
rulers, their amusements, and palace ceremonial, the most definite
influence was also that of Iran, mixed with the early Turkish
traditions, and not that of Byzantium."

Bosworth, C.E.; Hillenbrand, R.; Rogers, J.M.; Blois, F.C. de;
Bosworth, C.E.; Darley-Doran, R.E., Saldjukids, Encyclopaedia of
Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman , Th. Bianquis , C.E. Bosworth , E.
van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2009. Brill Online:
“Culturally, the constituting of the Seljuq Empire marked a further
step in the dethronement of Arabic from being the sole lingua
franca of educated and polite society in the Middle East. Coming as
they did through a Transoxania which was still substantially
Iranian and into Persia proper, the Seljuqs with no high-level
Turkish cultural or literary heritage of their own – took over that
of Persia, so that the Persian language became the administration
and culture in their land of Persia and Anatolia. The Persian
culture of the Rum Seljuqs was particularly splendid, and it was
only gradually that Turkish emerged there as a parallel language in
the field of government and adab; the Persian imprint in Ottoman
civilization was to remain strong until the 19th century.

Encyclopaedia Britannica,
"Seljuq", Online Edition, ( LINK): "... Because the Turkish Seljuqs had no
Islamic tradition or strong literary heritage of their own, they
adopted the cultural language of their Persian instructors in
Islam. Literary Persian thus spread to the whole of Iran, and the
Arabic language disappeared in that country except in works of
religious scholarship ..."

M.A. Amir-Moezzi, "Shahrbanu", Encyclopaedia
Iranica, Online Edition, ( LINK): "... here one might bear in mind
that turco-Persian dynasties such as the Ghaznavids, Saljuqs and
Ilkhanids were rapidly to adopt the Persian language and have their
origins traced back to the ancient kings of Persia rather than to
Turkish heroes or Muslim saints ..."

F. Daftary, Sectarian and National Movements in Iran,
Khorasan, and Trasoxania during Umayyad and Early Abbasid
Times, in History of Civilizations of Central Asia,
Vol 4, pt. 1; edited by M.S. Asimov and C.E.
Bosworth; UNESCO
Publishing, Institute of Ismaili Studies:
"... Not only did the inhabitants of Khurasan not succumb to
the language of the nomadic invaders, but they imposed their own
tongue on them. The region could even assimilate the Turkic
Ghaznavids and Seljuks (eleventh and twelfth centuries), the
Timurids (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries), and the Qajars
(nineteenth–twentieth centuries) ..."

21 Grousset, Rene, The Empire of the Steppes, (New
Brunswick:Rutgers University Press, 1988),147.